The Division III Men’s and Women’s Soccer Committees began preparing for the next iteration of the combined championships at their annual meetings February 14-16 in Indianapolis.

After two successful years in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Division III Men’s and Women’s Soccer Championships will begin a two-year stint at the Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida — the first NCAA championships held at a Disney property. The 2006 championships are November 24-25, while the 2007 finals are November 23-24.

Committee members praised Greensboro officials, including administrators and volunteers from Greensboro College, which hosted the championships at MacPherson Stadium in 2004 and 2005. The common-site approach has worked well for Division III soccer — last year’s women’s championship game in fact attracted a crowd of 1,073, the fifth-largest audience for the women’s title match.

Field conditions, which had been a concern because of six games being played over a two-day period, did not develop into an issue at Greensboro, and committee members don’t think that will be a problem in Orlando, either. The group voted to retain the same format for game times, with the women’s semifinals being played at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., and the men’s semis at 5 and 7:30 p.m. The women’s final will be at 1 p.m. the next day, followed by the men’s title match at 5.

The committees will solicit bids for the 2008 and 2009 championships this summer, with recommendations being finalized early in 2007.

In addition to site discussions, committee members also talked about selection criteria, focusing particularly on the best way to evaluate teams’ strength of schedules as one of the selection tools. The Division III Championships Committee has asked sport committees to consider replacing the current “quality of wins index” with an opponents’ average winning percentage, as well as an opponents’ opponents’ average winning percentage criterion to reward teams for playing challenging schedule.

All Division III sport committees use a quality of wins index as a criterion in the ranking and selection of teams. However, the championships committee, in reviewing criteria annually, has asked sport committees to compare the current quality of wins index in each sport with the average winning percentage criterion and to provide feedback about the latter’s future use, as well as possible implementation dates.

The soccer committees recommended to the championships committee the adoption of opponents’ average winning percentage and the elimination of the quality of wins index beginning in 2007. The groups would like to see the opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage included in the criteria in 2006 with the current quality of wins index.

In other action, the men’s and women’s committees recommended to the championships committee that the announcement of championship selections be split into two parts. Because the expanded bracket requires the committees to extend the amount of time they spend on the selection calls, the group wants to release a “teams in the field” announcement on the Sunday of selection weekend, followed on Monday by the actual bracket. The committee believes that would at least answer the “who’s in” question with the same immediacy coaches are accustomed to, while providing the group more time to do due diligence with filling out the bracket.

Both committees also named new chairs to begin terms in September. The men’s committee recommended Gerry DiBartolo, men’s soccer coach at Salisbury University, while the women’s committee endorsed Jeff Parker, the women’s soccer coach at Stevens Institute of Technology.